


Come slowly-- Eden!

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, F/M, Marriage, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 23:43:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6446929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary and Jed the night of the medical demonstration, a discussion of marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come slowly-- Eden!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emmadelosnardos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmadelosnardos/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Not words, not music or rhyme I want, only the hum of your valvèd voice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6073318) by [emmadelosnardos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmadelosnardos/pseuds/emmadelosnardos). 



> So, this is my first dip into the Mercy Street fandom as a writer (not just an avid reader). This story takes place within or along the universe of "Not words, not music or rhyme" by emmadelosnardos who was gracious enough to invite me to play with her Mary and Jed. I punted on the Whitman and went with a title from Emily Dickinson, although I know her work was not available to be read during the timeframe of the story, because she was alive and writing then and I feel like Mary would have loved her work.

Jed closed the book and set it down. Jonathan had brought it for him, handed it to him as he was leaving the house, the awkward conversation earlier in the afternoon behind them, though still between them, a gulf it might take many letters to bridge. Still, Jed appreciated the kindness of the book, a new medical treatise from Germany. It was something to challenge and occupy his mind with its theories and explanations, more subtle than the surgical manuals he studied so much in recent days, a taste of his life before. He had struggled with the new book, having not read German regularly for some time since becoming ensconced at Mansion House, but found himself smiling at the thought that Mary might help him wade through it. She had written of her fluency in French and German and he had caught her talking to herself in German from time to time on busy days on the wards. He thought she might be able to manage some of the thornier passages, even if the medical terminology was foreign. He set the heavy book down and noticed the depth of the shadow it threw against the mahogany table, the light from the lamp poor opposition to the shadows that had collected in every corner of the room. The windows had a mercurial gleam to them, moonlight limning the muslin curtains, and he glimpsed the clock’s round face, nine o’clock. 

Mary had gone upstairs at least half an hour earlier and he no longer heard the soft creaking of the floorboards as she moved about the rooms, opening the window for a breath of the night’s cooler air. He felt a curious mixture of eagerness and contentment at the thought of her waiting for him in her, now their, bedroom. The emotions were new, pleasing but unlooked-for, with no precedent from his first marriage or even his childhood. He tried to remember, or just imagine, how he would have felt before, in the house in Baltimore, with Eliza waiting for him in their bed. Even the imagining created a sense of unease in him, disloyalty to both Eliza and Mary, but still his mind chased after the thoughts, a cat after its mice. He thought of Eliza, lying in their bed, nightdress frilled around her neck and wrists, her chronic disgruntled air, brow furrowed. Having started to know contentment, he realized how his disregard of her had stoked her complaints, how little he had cared for her opinions or desires. Her mouth was full of sighs, the kind made to draw his attention, seek her displeasure and mend it. He had not known Mary to sigh other than in pleasure; she might pause, cock her head to the side before delivering a forthright declaration, or draw in her breath when she was hurt. Jed was not sure how he ought to feel about the comparisons he made between his two marriages, though he felt at some level it was fair to neither and somehow dishonorable. Mary had not spoken much of the Baron since they had married but it seemed it would be easier for her, moving from one love to another without any villain other than death. From what she had told him, her first husband had been a kind and thoughtful man, a scientist Jed would have enjoyed talking to and who surely had enjoyed engaging Mary’s own keen mind. He could tell Gustav had loved her well by her easy acceptance of Jed’s own affection, her honest desire expressed so joyfully; she was clearly accustomed to being cherished and Jed was thankful that she had been loved so thoroughly. 

Jed put a hand to his neck to loosen his cravat and then took the lamp in his hand. He walked down the quiet hallway, pieces of furniture catching the light then fading back into the night. There was a bowl of white roses on the dining room table and their fragrance hung in the air, even as one or two petals dropped onto the polished walnut. He climbed the stairs and then made his way to the bedroom. He opened the door, prepared to walk in, set the lamp down, and greet Mary with a kiss but stopped on the threshold, entirely arrested by the sight of Mary at her dressing table. Her back was to him and her face was turned away, her profile visible but obscured by her hands carefully plaiting her hair.

“Christ, Mary!” He was shocked, totally unprepared to see her sitting at the vanity, itself trimmed daintily with drifts of scalloped lace, looking all of sixteen in a long white nightdress, one braid hanging over her shoulder, neatly tied with a scrap of blue ribbon. Her hands worked at the other braid, her arms bare, the white fabric of the gown pooling in her lap, her feet peeking from the hem. She appeared completely virginal, as if she waited for her mother to come bid her goodnight with a kiss to her forehead and a reminder for evening prayers. She looked up at him, a question in her eyes, and he caught the honeyed flicker of her topaz wedding ring as she continued plaiting her hair.

“What is it?”

“It’s, it’s… you, you look so young, I feel I’m almost indecent to be in this room with you, though god knows, if you look sixteen, I have spent the past week feeling like a sixteen year old.” He did too, felt the excitement daily of simply being with her, the desire she could stoke with a glance, the touch of her hand on his face where his beard met his cheek, the stroke of her fingers through the curls at the back of his neck. He now wished both to just look at her, follow the dance of her slender fingers through her own dark curls, and to cross the room to take her in his arms, the smell of the laundered nightdress easily overcome by her own skin, the hints of rosewater she started the day with dissipated. He looked at her face again, more carefully, saw the bloom on her cheeks, her shy smile secondary to the wry look in her eyes, the eyes of a woman grown, a wife.

“You have clearly been reading too late or too long, Jedidiah, if you see a girl here and not your wife. You know there is nothing indecent between us,” here, one arched eyebrow teasing him, “but I will not be able to show my face when we call on Reverend and Mrs. Abbott tomorrow if my hair is a tangle all down my back.” She tied the second braid with its scrap of ribbon and tossed it over her shoulder, two long ropes of chestnut brown, a few curls defiantly escaping the braid and several more across her forehead, one even against the lute-curve of her cheek. How lovely she was!

She walked over to the bed and climbed in, her white nightdress indistinguishable from the sheets, the coverlet turned back. She turned the lamp on her bedside table down and picked up a slim book, undoubtedly poetry, and said, “I think you should get ready for bed as well, Jed. It has been a long day and tomorrow promises to be full, though I am hoping we might steal some time to walk by the river and loafe as we longed to.” She opened the book but it did not hold her entire attention as he stripped off his cravat and shirt, trousers. He made quick work of it but caught her merry glance as an elbow caught in its sleeve, as the shirt slid from the chair he placed it on. His ablutions at the wash-bowl both refreshed him and allowed a gentle tide of sleepiness begin to wave over him. As he settled in the bed beside her, Mary closed her book, set it on her night-table and turned her lamp down. Jed did the same and in a moment, the room was filled with moonlight rushing in, a solid rectangle across their bed and the light spilling away to the floor. He settled deeper among the linens and Mary turned on her side to nestle against him, her head resting on his chest. He brought his hand to cup the back of her head, her braids baring her neck. He looked down at her, her sweet face turned toward him like a flower.

“You are so dear to me, Mary! I was so proud of you today, at the demonstration, I hadn’t realized how much I missed working beside you. I can hardly believe I had forgotten how swift you are, how calm, even with all those cadets scrutinizing you—“

“Well, I hardly think I was their prime object of scrutiny. You did, after all, drill a hole in that patient’s skull.” 

Jed paused. Mary’s voice was amused and her tone took on an extra richness, the timbre lowered, her soft laughter soaked into her words. And yet, he thought of what he had asked of her without truly giving her a choice. They both knew the medical demonstration had been a pretext for his visit, but now that their marriage was made, he supposed she might have wished to spend the day in some other occupation, might have wished to avoid a return to the injured soldiers, to the Jed who was only Doctor Foster and she only the accomplished nurse at his side. They had so short a time together before the furlough was gone and he had to travel back to Virginia without her, perhaps she might have wished to spend it all as wife, not merely competent assistant. 

He thought back upon the day. Mary had worn a more somber gown, a dark blue like the minutes just before nightfall, free of adornment other than her wedding ring. Her bonnet was more stylish, made of straw and its lining framed her face with coral silk, like the carnelian in a cameo, but that was quickly doffed when they came to the examination room. After briefly greeting Dr. Harris, it was as if a veil had fallen upon her, obscuring all the curious charms that made her his Mary, rendering her simply the most correct nurse she could be. He still caught the look in her eye that sought his approval, the whiff of consternation across her brow when he fumbled her name, prodded her to answer the questions. She lay next to him now in their bed, her heartbeat faint but steady against his ribcage, but his mind spun back to days at Mansion House. 

Even after just a few days as her husband, he understood her so much better, saw again her expression when he had challenged her about the War, demanded she care for Confederates, tried to shame her about her vocation and her guilt. He saw again the look in her eyes when he spoke of her husband, first the moment of shock, the pain like a bayonet, unexpected from him, and the way she withdrew, having decided he was no longer safe. He knew again, but more, how deeply he had hurt her, knew now what it meant that she schooled her face and eyes to the blind, beautiful symmetry of a Greek statue. He saw it had hurt her more than when he had grabbed at her for a kiss, a caress he hadn’t cared if she was unwilling to give. Then she had steeled herself for battle within a second, rejected him with her tightly shut eyes, stiff mouth ready to tell him how unlike himself he was, how unmanned. He looked at her again, so close to him, her eyelashes longer than any he’d ever seen before, and her dark eyes, trying to solve him. A sick feeling rose in him, anger at himself, fear of her rejection, but mostly shame. He recognized the feeling even as his words came unbidden, “Oh Mary, I am so ashamed, I have been cruel without reason to the person I love best, and I—“

“Jedediah,” she interrupted, raising herself up onto a pillow, halfway to upright but with a soft hand still warm on his bare chest, “Jedediah, what are you talking about? Where have you gone inside your head? Surely, you don’t mean anything about the medical demonstration today?”

“No, not today, though I do apologize for my confusion about your name. No, I am thinking of all the times at Mansion House when I hurt you, when I was harsh or dismissive or mocking, when I accused you or sat in judgment. But especially when I spoke to you of Gustav, when I think of you then, the look in your eyes…”

“Jed, love, Jed, you must stop this. This is a life ago now, not something to stew over, to castigate yourself with. I will not let you add my voice to the chorus denouncing you.” Her voice was firm but warm, the love she had professed to him clear in every word, the shape of her mouth and her hand moving to cup his cheek.

“But Mary, how can you brush it away? I know now how you came to us, the losses you’d had and your choice to put all that towards helping run a hospital when Mrs. Dix commanded, save the boys there despite any pain and discomfort you might sustain yourself. How can you ignore how I treated you when I had seen with my own eyes that you slept on the floor of the wards uncomplaining, without anything a woman might expect for comfort, expected to put it all to rights without the help of one person, save Samuel Diggs?” He closed his eyes, the speech having left him with that same feeling of shame but redoubled.

“Jed, look at me,” she said as she sat up in the bed, pillows behind her. The movement had tangled her nightdress a bit and the already loose neckline had shifted, baring the tops of her breasts, a place he wished to hide his face like a child. “Jed, I will accept your apology since I can tell that is what you need now, and I do appreciate that you are remembering how we started together. But I must tell you that I was not as hurt as you think. Jed, to be a woman in this world, the world of men, is to be invisible, or nearly so. My whole life, I have been a daughter or sister to my father and brother, with little to separate me from Caroline save our age and her blue eyes. We were both dutiful girls to our father and brother and they saw us as that, like… like two nearly identical paper dolls. To my mother, to my sister, I was Mary, sometimes a naughty imp, sometimes good, forever planning some project. My grandfather lived with us a bit when I was small and I think he also saw me as my own little person. But in the world, I was simply my father’s daughter, my brother’s sister. When I worked at the mill, they saw the designs I gave them, not the woman who drew. Gustav accepted me, saw more than any man had before, but he saw what was there on the surface, a woman eager to discuss poetry or Europe, to listen to his scientific plans, but not the one who had to breathe away frustration or dash away tears of impatience as much as sorrow.”

He looked at her. She was looking back at him so intently, he could see in her eyes as she considered and discarded words. “Every time you talked to me, scolded me, mocked me… you were seeing me, looking at me. You paid attention to every reaction, prodded me to see what I would do or say next. When we spoke, you listened deeply enough to challenge me truly. You saw enough to respect, something worthy of your own arguments. What you said about Gustav and my… my desire to save him, you were right. It did hurt me when you said that, it felt for a minute like I couldn’t breathe, but I still knew you were right, that you had seen to the heart of me, articulated it in a way I had never tried, or been able to, or perhaps let myself. I will forgive you because you need that, but I am not sorry for being hurt when it means I am a real person to you, because the hurt is part of the being known.”

Jed looked at her, quiet now. He looked and saw her bright, dark eyes, her sincerity, her hope and expectation that he would understand what she had said, as he had understood so many other things about her. And her hope that he would understand her in ways she hadn’t yet imagined being understood, or even grasped herself. Seeing it all and knowing she wanted him to see, to show herself, that that was the truest part of the love she sought from him and gave in return, that resonated deep within him, like the ringing of a great bell, perfectly struck. He did then what he must, moved surely to take her in his arms, holding her close, kissing her mouth first, then her eyelids, her cheeks. She turned her face so their lips met again, mouths open, soft and warm, the faint taste of her after-dinner tea.

It was not a time for more words. He kept looking at her in the moonlight, Mary, his wife and lover, friend, the Mary he already knew and the Mary he wanted to know more of. Eliza flitted across his mind for a moment, a spike of guilt at the recognition she had been a paper doll to him, and then forgotten with the briefest apologetic thought, as Mary turned in his arms, nightdress rucking up, twisting round her to reveal her slender waist, set off the round breasts that fit so well in his hands. Mary murmured against his mouth, not a word but a sound of warm satisfaction and some yearning. He rolled them over, unwinding the nightgown but easing it up and aside, so he could feel her smooth, warm thighs. She let him settle between them and he bent his head to kiss the side of her neck. Lying this way, they could both feel his arousal and how easy it could be to slip, to rock together in the way he had promised they wouldn’t yet, that she longed for and feared at once. He felt her start to whisper before he even heard her words.

“I am the one ashamed, a wife who doesn’t… I am too scared to lose another baby, that I will lose myself, I am not giving you what you want, what you are too kind to ask of me.”

Jed kissed her neck where her carotid beat, the artery’s thrum strong but still delicate beneath his lips, like Mary herself. He kissed her again and held her more tightly, so she could feel how much he still wanted her, and spoke softly into her ear, “My darling, I am not too kind. I am selfish, for I want more and more of this, your desire for me unquestioned, something I have hardly had before. I, this waiting is… more intimate than I have ever been with anyone. The way you touch me, let me touch you, this is more intimate, more love than I have ever had. And I am a selfish man,” he kissed her again on the side of her neck, once, twice, “selfish, because when I put a baby in your belly, I want to be there the whole time, watch your belly grow round, help you myself if you are ill, be there every day, want to see our baby born and at your breast…” Now they were rocking against each other, safe, but as if they would take each other, and with every word, Mary gasped, clung tighter, let tears run from the corners of her eyes and into his mouth, then cried, “Oh, oh, love, love you—“ as he spent and she clasped him close, then loosened, but kept her arms round him. In a few minutes, they wrestled the nightdress from her and threw it from the bed, then settled against each other to sleep after Jed kissed her forehead and mouth once more, words also spent.

That night, Mary dreamt of working in the her spring garden, sun at her back, bonnet shading her face; she worked to plant her seeds and cuttings with a hard, round belly catching her off-guard as she reached for the trowel Jed handed her. Jed dreamed of Mary in another white bed, a light shawl round her shoulders and her arms full, soft dark curls and a small pink cheek visible above a swaddle. They slept soundly through the night, the grey light of an August dawn and smell of warm summer rain waking them. In the eaves, a mourning dove cooed the day awake.


End file.
